An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Un­der the cov­er of dark­ness, com­peti­tors in this year’s J’Ou­vert King and Queen com­pe­ti­tion con­verged on South Quay, Port-of-Spain, haul­ing tow­er­ing cos­tumes and elab­o­rate props for one of Car­ni­val’s most bit­ing show­cas­es of so­cial com­men­tary. By the time the first bands be­gan to move, mas­quer­aders had al­ready trained their satire on lo­cal politi­cians, ris­ing tax­es, traf­fic penal­ties, and even world lead­ers, us­ing tra­di­tion­al mas to lam­poon the head­lines dom­i­nat­ing na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion.

While the spec­ta­tors in down­town Port-of-Spain have been dwin­dling in re­cent years, there ap­peared to be a slight in­crease this time around, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Kitch­en­er Stands, where clus­ters of on­look­ers gath­ered to take in the tra­di­tion­al mas pre­sen­ta­tions. Even so, over­all crowd den­si­ty along some sec­tions of the route was thin­ner than in peak years, re­flect­ing broad­er shifts in how au­di­ences en­gage with Car­ni­val events. Re­turn­ing cham­pi­on Richard Mon­tano se­cured the J’Ou­vert King ti­tle for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year with his po­lit­i­cal por­tray­al, “U-EN-SEE Run­ning D Corn-Tree.”

Draped in a char­ac­ter cos­tume that blend­ed hu­mour with cri­tique, Mon­tano con­tin­ued a long-stand­ing tra­di­tion of com­men­tary through old mas. Asked about re­tain­ing his crown, Mon­tano said he felt sat­is­fied that his pre­sen­ta­tion res­onat­ed with judges and spec­ta­tors. “I am feel­ing I would be a king un­til I die,” he said, re­flect­ing on his back-to-back vic­to­ries. Mon­tano ex­plained that the con­cept emerged late last year as he fol­lowed po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments from Flori­da, where he re­sides for part of the year. He re­turned to Trinidad specif­i­cal­ly to por­tray the char­ac­ter. How­ev­er, de­spite his per­son­al suc­cess, Mon­tano ex­pressed con­cern that par­tic­i­pa­tion in tra­di­tion­al J’Ou­vert mas ap­pears to be shrink­ing. He ob­served that in­ter­est in old mas is not as strong as it once was and sug­gest­ed that in­creased prize mon­ey could en­cour­age more com­peti­tors to in­vest in high-qual­i­ty por­tray­als.The cur­rent first prize for J’Ou­vert King stands at $2,500. Mon­tano ar­gued that rais­ing it to about $4,000 would help off­set the cost of ma­te­ri­als and pro­duc­tion, not­ing that his own cos­tume ex­ceed­ed the val­ue of the prize. “My pas­sion for old mas is right here all the time,” he added, main­tain­ing that stronger in­cen­tives could stim­u­late broad­er par­tic­i­pa­tion.

On the women’s side, Lav­erne Smith suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed her crown as J’Ou­vert Queen, de­liv­er­ing a comedic pre­sen­ta­tion cen­tred on traf­fic fines and penal­ties that drew loud re­ac­tions from on­look­ers.

Smith, who has now cap­tured the ti­tle three times, in­clud­ing 2024 and 2025, said her por­tray­al was in­spired by a deeply per­son­al mile­stone. “I’m an or­phan, I didn’t have any moth­er or fa­ther, so I wasn’t able to fin­ish school,” she said. “My grand­daugh­ter did pret­ty well, and she said, ‘Ma­ma, you know what… You helped me to do it, and I think you can do it too, just come do it.’ And I went with her and did it, so we both passed.” Smith ex­plained that she re­peat­ed CXC So­cial Stud­ies along­side her grand­daugh­ter last year, an ex­pe­ri­ence that in­flu­enced her cre­ative di­rec­tion and sharp­ened her com­men­tary on civic is­sues.

As dawn broke over the cap­i­tal, mas­quer­aders con­tin­ued danc­ing through the streets, sus­tain­ing the en­er­gy that de­fines the ear­ly hours of Car­ni­val Mon­day.

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne was present down­town and ob­served steady move­ment in­to the city de­spite ear­ly con­cerns about spec­ta­tor turnout. “Peo­ple from Port-of-Spain are very, very keen on J’Ou­vert. As I made my way down here, I saw sev­er­al peo­ple walk­ing to meet whichev­er J’Ou­vert band they’re par­tic­i­pat­ing with,” he said. “So we con­tin­ue to do the work to im­prove the prod­uct that we of­fer for down­town Car­ni­val,” Al­leyne not­ed that Car­ni­val at­ten­dance in 2025 sur­passed 2024 fig­ures and ex­pects num­bers to build over the two-day pa­rade.

He ac­knowl­edged that the Car­ni­val prod­uct con­tin­ues to evolve, with J’Ou­vert of­ten draw­ing larg­er crowds than tra­di­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions staged lat­er in the day. The may­or stressed that pre­serv­ing her­itage re­mains cen­tral to the Down­town Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee’s man­date, par­tic­u­lar­ly through ded­i­cat­ed com­pe­ti­tions for tra­di­tion­al and ole mas. He al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence in se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments across the cap­i­tal, cit­ing the vis­i­ble pres­ence of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Fire Ser­vice, and De­fence Force, along with sup­port agen­cies in­clud­ing WASA and T&TEC. In ad­di­tion to polic­ing, the city cor­po­ra­tion de­ployed san­i­ta­tion crews, street sweep­ers, wa­ter trucks, and com­pactors from ear­ly morn­ing hours. Al­leyne said cleanup cam­paigns were con­duct­ed over the past two week­ends to pre­pare the cap­i­tal for Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties.